Woody Allen, Carla Bruni film to open Cannes Film Festival

Cannes Film Festival organisers announced Wednesday that Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", which features France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in a minor role, will be the opening night movie in May.

AFP - US director Woody Allen's latest film "Midnight in Paris" -- featuring French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy -- will open the Cannes film festival in May, organisers said Wednesday.

The romantic comedy, shot last year in the French capital and starring Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard as well as Kathy Bates and Adrien Brody, will be shown out of competition at the world's most prestigious film bash.

"'Midnight in Paris' is a wonderful love letter to Paris," said Festival director Thierry Fremaux.

"It's a film in which Woody Allen takes a deeper look at the issues raised in his last films: our relationship with history, art, pleasure and life," he said in a statement.

Tabloid reports said that Bruni-Sarkozy was so bad in her cameo role as a tour guide at Paris' Rodin Museum that Allen was considering leaving her out of the final cut, but the director later insisted he was keeping her scene.

The list of films picked for the official selection competing for the festival's top prizes will be made public in April.

US actor and director Robert De Niro will be president of the jury of this year's festival, which opens on May 11 on the French Riviera.

De Niro, 67, will the third American in four years to head the jury, after director Tim Burton in 2010 and actor-director Sean Penn in 2008.

Last year a surreal movie from Thailand about the reveries of a dying man was the surprise winner of the Palme d'Or top prize.